“Forests cannot be treated as an offset.” The Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance responds to the Katowice Declaration on Forests for the Climate

Yesterday, REDD-Monitor wrote about the Katowice Declaration on Forests for the Climate. The final version of declaration was released shortly after REDD-Monitor’s post. There were significant changes, but the Declaration remains bullshit.

Yesterday, I pointed out that unless the Declaration is changed to include the fact that to address climate change we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, starting now, it will remain a dangerous distraction.

You can read the final version of the Ministerial Katowice Declaration on Forests for the Climate, here.

Below is the final version with the changes since the September 2018 leaked draft version marked: New text is coloured red and deleted text is crossed out.

The final version acknowledges that governments aim to “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible”, but no mechanism is suggested for achieving this. And the Declaration does not rule out offsetting continued emissions against the carbon stored in forests. On the contrary, REDD is specifically mentioned in the Declaration.

“The dangerous misconception is the idea that the land use sector could balance out emissions from the fossil fuel. It cannot. Improvements in the mitigation performance of forests and forest landscapes must be taken in conjunction with deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions.

“Simply put, forests cannot be treated as an offset. Not conceptually, not as part of a Paris Agreement market mechanism, and certainly not to excuse continued coal burning or any other use of fossil fuels.”

In his presentation at the CLARA side event, Souparna Lahiri of the Global Forest Coalition talked about bioenergy. He pointed out that an area about the size of India would need to be converted to industrial tree plantations for bioenergy to provide just 5% of global energy demand.

Lahiri also noted that the Declaration refers to false solutions, such as REDD:

“We do not need these false solutions such as REDD+ to conserve forests and stop deforestation. Ministers should increase ambition in the Declaration on Forests. If the declaration noted that reductions in emissions and land carbon sequestration could result from improved land rights for indigenous peoples and local communities, reforestation and improved forest management, which is clearly missing in the Declaration.”

After the presentations, a question came from Matt Lithgow, a journalist with Carbon Pulse. He noted that in the current version of the negotiating text on Article 6.2, “removals by sinks” is in brackets in the draft text.

“The whole issue of trading in forest carbon is very vexed, and certainly the preference among the CLARA grouping has been to exclude it. Simply because forests are a far more complex system that the very simple emissions system when you dig up fossil fuel, you burn it and it goes straight into the atmosphere.

“Carbon in natural systems cycles through the system and is associated with so many other intimately integrated issues, it doesn’t lend itself a trading system.

“And then there’s the simpler argument there is actually no space left for offsetting. We simply have to reduce emissions in all sectors. So the system that the UN has set up which encourages offsetting across sectors and between sectors actually has some fundamental flaws.”

Here is the final version with the changes since the September 2018 draft version tracked:

Recognizing that forest ecosystems have a special role to play in the accumulation of carbon in the soil and trees, and then in the pool of harvested wood product serving as alternative materials with a smaller carbon footprint,

Published

REDDisms:

“[Carbon trading is a] recipe for corruption. The system is ungovernable, from start to finish. We do not have the capacity to monitor every polluter and every timber thief and every derivatives trader in every part of the globe, and yet we are opening up markets to trading in invisible gases that will involve these.”